The film is based on a novel. It is about an American Army volunteer confronts a British beautiful nurse on the eve of the offensive in the Alps. In no time, they fall in love and then they decide to escape to Switzerland to await the birth of their son. Suddenly, a tragedy happens to them.
Perhaps what is most irritating about the film is that too many times an exciting scene of Hemingway's is shucked out in favor of a distressingly inferior one invented (if I may indulge the Muse a moment) by Ben Hecht, who is responsible for the script.
One of David O. Selznick's many attempts to shape his lady-love Jennifer Jones' largely immutable mug into the face that launched a thousand cinematic ships.
This film, for all its size and color, doesn't do much more by Hemingway's book than was done by the sentimental version of it played by Helen Hayes and Gary Cooper some twenty-five years ago.
Time Out
January 26, 2006
A padded Ben Hecht script and Selznick's invariable tendency to overkill are equally to blame.
Selznick's last film as producer is a vastly disappointing remake of the superior 1932 version of Hemingway's novel, a sentimental, overblown production with stiff performances from Rock Hudson and Jennifer Jones.
